1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the cooling of an ink storage unit which supplies ink to a printing apparatus.
2. Related Art
In the related art, as an ink jet-type printer, a technology has been proposed that includes a print head unit which has an ink discharging device (the piezoelectric element of a piezoelectric-type printer or the heater of a thermal-type printer), and an ink circulation path which is connected to an ink tank, thereby circulating ink (refer to JP-A-2006-289955). In the ink jet-type printer, since the load of the ink discharging device or the load of the control circuit of the ink discharging device increases along with improvements in print speed or print resolution, the temperature of the ink discharging device or the control circuit rises, and thus the temperature of the print head unit becomes high.
In the above-described technology that circulates ink, when the temperature of the print head unit is high because high-speed printing or high-resolution printing is performed, the temperature of ink rises while ink passes through the print head unit, thus high temperature ink is supplied (returned) to the ink tank. Therefore, since the temperature of the ink tank itself is unusually high, high heat resistance is required for the base material of the ink tank, and thus there is a problem in that the manufacturing cost of the ink tank is expensive. In addition, since ink, the temperature of which is high, is supplied to the ink tank, the temperature of ink which is stored in the ink tank in advance rises, and thus there is a problem in that the physical properties of ink vary.
Meanwhile, such a problem is not limited to a configuration which circulates ink supplied from the ink tank, and is common to a configuration which circulates ink supplied from an arbitrary ink storage unit, such as ink cartridges, which stores ink. In addition, such a program is not limited to the ink jet-type printer, and is common to an arbitrary printing apparatus which includes a print head unit, the temperature of which rises along with an ink discharging operation.